Midterm Essay
Due: Friday, October 9 by 3:25. Turn in a hard copy, but please share a fresh Google Doc
with me as well.
Word count range: 1200-(no more than) 1500 words
Please include proper MLA format etc…
The cool thing about having three teachers teach senior English is that you get more choices
when it comes to essay topics.
I.
If you like more freedom:
Include ideas, themes, and characters from Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies and Borges’ short
stories in Ficciones. Use one or more of them to draw comparisons, to reinforce a point you are
making, or to reveal a contradictory idea. Determinism (luck, chance, fate), time, memory, love,
history, fantasy / reality, etc. are all possible points of entry for your essay.
1. Consider how time functions in the lives of two or three characters, what it measures, how it
affects their action and beliefs—and how these effects are demonstrated.
2. In what ways does a character’s context control him or her? Does he or she control it?
3.
Examine some of the beneficial and destructive relationships in these works—between
people, between people and things, or between people and ideas.
4.
Consider whether language is a separate reality rather than purely a symbol system
intended to represent or reference ideas, objects, and people. Does it have a power of its own?
Does it preserve memory and meaning beyond experience?
II.
If you like more direction:
5.
In the first two stories in Lahiri’s collection, “A Temporary Matter” and “When Mr.
Pirzada Came to Dine,” external forces put pressure on the characters and their actions. In
Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths,” the idea of time and the “many worlds” theory does the
same. Choose a character from each story and examine how the outside world influences inner
lives and exterior actions.
6.
In “Interpreter of Maladies” and “Mrs. Sen’s” by Lahiri, the two main characters both
hold dearly to concepts that may or may not serve them in terms of their identities, relationships,
and the future. In “The Secret Miracle,” Hladik has a clear goal as well only his is marked by a
more distinct sense of urgency. Look closely at these three characters in these stories and
examine how and why they wrestle with these ideas of self and what costs are attached to such
definitions.
7.
In Lahiri’s “The Third and Final Continent” and Borges’s “The Garden of the Forking
Paths” the respective narrators come face-to-face with two quite formidable gatekeepers, namely
Mrs. Croft and Stephen Albert. Compare the roles that these two guardian figures play.
8.
Borges’s very short story “The End” is told from the close third person perspective of an
immobile old man. What are the benefits of telling it from this point of view? Choose one or two
of Lahiri’s stories. Compare the way that she uses point of view with the way that Borges works
in “The End.”
9.
In “The Treatment of Bibi Haldar,” Bibi becomes pregnant somewhat mysteriously. The
result of her childbirth is that she is miraculously cured of her epilepsy, a disease that in many
cultures is regarded as the mark of spiritual possession. In “The Circular Ruins,” we are privy to
the creation of a wizard’s son. Compare these two miraculous births and the nature of the
mysteries that surround them.
10.
Compare Borges’s “The Babylon Lottery” with Lahiri’s “A Real Durwan.” How does
each writer tackle the concepts of destiny, chance, determinism, free will, and causality? Don’t
feel as if you must consider every one of those big issues. They are suggestions to spark your
inquiry.